


your heart, behind my ribs

by winteryknights (BlackcatNamedlucky)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackcatNamedlucky/pseuds/winteryknights
Summary: I know what you are doing,you tell him, in a language that hasn’t been spoken in long enough that they are now trying to decipher it in university classrooms.He looks at you, tired lines across his face showing the years he has lived.I know,he all but whispers, in the same tongue.You do not cross the room to be with him. You do not think it would be welcome.Please, let me help you.He looks down. He is silent, for a long, arduous moment.I don’t know how,he says, finally.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 12
Kudos: 79





	your heart, behind my ribs

He never leaves without saying “I love you” anymore. Not “goodbye,” not “see you soon,” it’s always “I love you,” spoken with such a depth of sincerity that sometimes you are left breathless for a moment after hearing it.

It is not just to you, of course, but when it is, it is different than the way he says it to the others. He softens when he says it to you. Not every time, not after so long together, but it is warmer, somehow, to hear those words from him when they are meant for you.

It is more forceful, with Andromache, a kind of love that is adamant you acknowledge its existence. It is gentle, too. You’d think, if your skin did not knit itself back together within seconds of being split and you needed such things, that it is a love that is like a salve. It burns you in order to heal you, and she needs to hear it just as much as he needs to say it.

And it is trepidatious, with Nile. She doesn’t hear it. How could she, knowing him for so little time? You all are as unreadable to her as she can be to you. But you hear it. You know why his voice pitches with an uncertain hope. He does not want it to happen again, does not want her to feel alone in your little family.

You know she does not. You know that he knows this.

You do not bring it up.

Sometimes he says it in languages that are only kept alive by the two of you. Andromache’s ears will pick up on the sharp consonants of these tongues, and Nile’s on the familiarity of the inflection, but it is your heart that is torn on the edges of its meaning, and you would gladly bleed out a thousand times over for him.

You do not say this, not anymore. Not after seeing the angry, puckered skin on Andromache’s stomach. A grotesque reminder of what was done, of who the first person to mar that skin in thousands of years was supposed to be to you.

Instead, when it is night and the air is thick with cold and his arm is too tight against your stomach and his fingers are twitching in yours, you remind him that he is worth living a thousand lives for. You are one of an incredible few on this earth who know what that truly means.

He believes you because he knows it is the truth when it is coming from your lips.

You are not so sure he would believe the others.

You want to bring it up, you do. You know what to say to him, it has been centuries since your words were anything but a comfort for him. You know that if you just talk to him, you will be able to help.

He knows this too. This is why he has been avoiding you.

He thinks he is being subtle about it. You have known him too long not to notice how he wakes later, now. Or pretends to, anyways, leaving your bedroom late enough that you will not have the kitchen to yourselves to talk in the mornings as you make coffee and try to want to eat. He is the first to offer to train Nile, to drag Andromache shopping with him when the safehouse you have been staying in for far too long is running out of supplies, to propose nights out when everyone is going stir crazy.

Andromache is too tired to notice, and Nile too new, but you do. And it hurts. But a game of cat and mouse takes two, so you settle into your role and try to chase him into corners where he has nothing to turn to.

It makes you feel sick.

He does not know this. You do not want him to. You do not want him to end this little game out of guilt.

It will not help him to heal.

You like to think you are cleverer than a cat (and he, by far, cleverer than a mouse). At the very least, you have more resources at your disposal. You can convince the other animals you live with to leave you alone with the mouse.

Andromache takes Nile to a bakery she’d helped ensure the survival of after the Great War. (The war to end all wars, you think, bitterly.)

You are alone with him. After months of being crowded in with others, unable to say what needs to be said, you are alone with him.

_I know what you are doing,_ you tell him, in a language that hasn’t been spoken in long enough that they are now trying to decipher it in university classrooms.

He looks at you, tired lines across his face showing the years he has lived. _I know,_ he all but whispers, in the same tongue.

You do not cross the room to be with him. You do not think it would be welcome.

_Please, let me help you._

He looks down. He is silent, for a long, arduous moment.

_I don’t know how,_ he says, finally.

It is a jagged knife to your chest. You think, again, about how you used to say you would gladly bleed out a thousand times for him. You amend this statement, now, to yourself. You cannot gladly bleed out because of him.

_I do,_ you say, and a wretched half-sob escapes him.

You cross the room.

He collapses at your feet. You let him pull you down, too, so that you are kneeling, his face buried in your chest and his hands gripping at the back of your shirt. It feels like a broken prayer.

You let him cry, let him shake apart in your arms, and know that you would spend however long it takes helping him pick up the pieces again. You tell him he does not have to be strong, and he cries harder for it, a low keen at the back of his throat, the resonations of the broken strings of his heart.

He lets himself break, finally. The way you broke, the night it happened, and Andromache a week later. The way you are sure Nile is going to, once she gets out of the stage where everything feels like a terrible, incessant dream.

You hold him, the way he held you, and you realize that the first to put these hairline fractures in his soul was not Cain (you will not say his name, not even to yourself, he does not deserve the familiarity), it was you.

It was you taking minutes to wake when he took seconds. It was you, a pool of blood and bone and brain spreading under you as all he could do was watch. It was you, pretending nothing had happened.

You, not saying goodbye to a man you had insisted could be saved.

You hold him tighter, listen to his sobbing fade away in exhaustion, and whisper fervent apologies into his hair.

The two of you sit like this, wrapped in the silence like a quilt, until the room darkens from the disappearance of the sun’s rays.

It is then that he speaks again.

_I’m too tired to be angry, anymore,_ he admits, barely audible, and now that he has started it is like a dam has broken. _I want to be angry. I want to be furious, to burn when I’m reminded of him, to wish he could die, but I’m just hurting._

Guilt taints the edges of his words.

_It just hurts._

Your heart shatters.

_I wish I knew how to hold onto the anger._

He says it like it is some horrible secret, some failing that he dares to feel the festering wound of betrayal.

_And what good would that do?_ you ask, and he tilts his head to look at you. The curiosity, the desire for life that is usually alight in his eyes has dulled. You have seen them look more alive when he is dead. _The anger just reminds you of the pain,_ you say, _It hurts more than the wound._

_People understand anger,_ he counters. _They don’t understand waking up every morning and knowing, intimately, that you feel like you’re dying._

_I do,_ you say, again. _I will always understand, if only you would just tell me._

_I know,_ he says. _Why do you think I didn’t? I can’t forget the pain. I need it._

You know why. You wish you did not. You ask him anyways.

_I need the reminder. So that I don’t fail with her._

You are not sure who he means.

You think of how God protected Cain. You think, not for the first time, that He was wrong.

And you are angry enough for the both of you.

_You did not fail,_ you tell him, and wish disbelief did not flash through his eyes. _He did,_ you say, _he knew what he was doing. He lost one family and, in his pain, devoted himself to losing the other._

It is harsher than you intended.

You wish you could say it to him.

_Why couldn’t we be enough? Why was everything we did for him not enough?_ he asks. He does not expect you to have an answer. You do not.

Instead, you say, _It is enough for Andromache. It is enough for Nile._ You _are enough for me._

An aborted smile ghosts his lips, if only for a moment.

It is followed, immediately, by guilt.

_No,_ you say, before he can open his mouth to protest. _You are one man. You cannot be enough for the world. That does not mean you have failed._

He is silent. It is a heavy kind of silence.

_Let’s go to bed,_ he says, at last, and rises to his feet.

You rise with him. You always have.

You sleep, and the next morning he wakes with you. He prays while you make coffee, and teases Nile and Andromache about coming in while you are making breakfast in the same clothes they left in last night. Andromache winks. Nile stutters. He has come home to you. He has come home to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> the first line of this came to me as I was trying to fall asleep a few nights ago, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it so I wrote this. it's a little bit of a creative writing exercise in playing with perspective and style. I hope you liked it  
> if you want to chat you can find me on tumblr at [the-sneering-menagerie](https://the-sneering-menagerie.tumblr.com)  
> if you want to listen to the melancholy love songs with joe/nicky vibes I was listening to while writing this, you can find them all in [this](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2mIAYcRY2jPnVuUgH4E9Wj?si=Fo1YI3cXQ-ioxB8G0i9Xlg) playlist  
> as always, comments and kudos make my day :)


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